In the arid West, water is life.  And life may get a lot more difficult for the Colorado River - a major source of water for Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California - over the next few decades.

First, there's the double whammy of population growth and climate change, the first demanding more water from the river, and the second making it extremely likely that there will be less water for that population to drink, use to grow crops, etc.

Second, there's the threat from oil shale development.  The Bush administration pushed through midnight regulations last month to spur development of oil shale deposits in Colorado and Utah.  The Bureau of Land Management estimates that it will take three gallons of precious West Slope Colorado water to produce one gallon of fossil fuel.  And while no one in the world has yet figured out how to develop shale commercially, Shell - which is researching and investing in oil shale - has already bought large numbers of water rights in the Colorado River basin.  That has the water buffalos at the Denver Water Board worried.

One of the good things about the Web is that it increases accountability.  Those questioning the so-called "mainstream media" (MSM) don't have to hope that a stingy editor will find a few column inches to publish an op-ed to have their views heard.

So while I'm a regular reader of The New York Times, I was happy to see this article at grist.org  panning the Times' story on the beetle epidemic which is killing off hundreds of thousands of acres of pine forest in the Rocky Mountains.  The "Newspaper of Record" omitted the key fact that global warming is playing a key role in the beetle epidemic.  That's because beetles are typically killed off when subzero temperatures last for days in the forest, something that hasn't happened for years.

It's a key aspect of the beetle story.  And kudos to grist.org for telling it.

We expected the worst for the environment from a Bush presidency.  And he has never worked harder to meet our expectations than in these last few months.  The list of misdeeds is long, and probably sadly familiar.  Some of W's parting shots include:

- Gutting key protection in the Endangered Species Act.

- Opening millions of acres of pristine lands in Utah to oil drillers and off-roaders - and paving the way for a last minute lease sale that will auction off drilling sites next to Arches National Park.

- Opening millions of acres in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming to oil shale development, which will suck streams dry and require ten new power plants to bake oil from rocks.

- Approving plans to carve powerline and pipeline corridors through the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and other sensitive lands.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne didn't like the law that required him to promptly protect public lands around the Grand Canyon from uranium mining.  So he's getting rid of it. Citizens have only a few days to express their opposition.

The headline in an e-newsletter trumpeted: "Bush Plans for Environmental Legacy."  And apparently it wasn't a joke.

Bush is being pressed to protect the largest underwater canyon on Earth and some scattered atolls in the Pacific as national monuments. Bush may think it's OK to protect America's environment as long as it's in the ocean thousand miles away from the mainland.  (Should we ask for a national park in Iraq? He might like that too.)

At the same time, of course, he was pressing a slightly different environmental legacy for the oceans: stripping protection from much of America's coastline from petroleum drilling. And with the help of Democrats and Republicans in Congress, he got what he wanted.

Forests are helping reduce global warming, but global warming is killing forests.

Death Valley protected from attempt to use old, repealed law to put dirt bikes in National Park wilderness

There's still a chance for the public - and the Governor - to weigh in for FULL protection of Colorado's spectacular roadless lands.

Colorado's more than 4 million acres of roadless national forest are at risk in the coming months because of an apparent alliance between our lame duck president, George W. Bush, and Colorado's Democratic governor, Bill Ritter.

They tell Colorado that proposed regulations will cripple the local economy, but investors are told that profits will still boom.

Oil and gas company propaganda trots out old 'jobs v. environment' canard. A Denver Post columnist responds 'Oh yeah? We'll take our environment over your jobs!'